The murder was straight out of a cheap spy thriller. At least 11 professional assassins, some wearing wigs and fake beards, tracked a senior Hamas official to his Dubai hotel in January and killed him with cold precision, fleeing the country afterward on European passports, the Dubai police say.

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The Telegraph quoted the Irish government denying the legitimacy of several supposedly Irish passports, and provided details of the assassination.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior figure in the military wing of Hamas, was found dead in a hotel room on Jan 20. According to one report he was killed by a female assassin who entered his room by posing as a member of hotel staff, injected him with a drug that induced a heart attack and hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door.

But other officers said he was strangled, probably after receiving an electric shock.

Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, blamed Israel’s Mossad intelligence service for the killing.